Beyond this historical claim, we should also be emphazing our political and legal claims. Ted Belman
[..]
Zahalka’s remarks stem from a broader line of argument which claims that the Jews have no history in their land, that the Temple never stood on the Temple Mount, and that Zionism is a colonialist and racist movement whose goal is to disinherit the “real owners” of the land.
These lies have gained traction internationally because Israel mainly makes security arguments when it talks about the danger of a Palestinian state in the mountains of Judea and Samaria. While these security arguments are true, as evidenced by the Gaza Strip with its thousands of rockets, that does not stop the European Union and BDS movement from moving forward with sanctions against Israel. The reason for this is that we have attenuated our claims that have to do with the justice of our right to the land.
Every diplomatic statement, press conference and political speech needs to emphasize, first and foremost, the historical, religious and moral rights of the Jews to their land. Mr. President of the United States of America, do you believe in the Bible? Do you believe in the promise of this land to the Jewish people? Almost 2,000 years before Islam came to this world, when the forefathers of MKs Zahalka and Tibi were worshipping idols in the Hijaz desert, our own forefathers were walking here and beginning to practice monotheism.
One thousand six hundred years before Islam, we had a kingdom and Temple in Jerusalem. Twice we were destroyed and exiled, and twice we came back home. Four hundred years before the advent of Islam, the Romans changed the name of Judea to Palestine, after the coastal nation known as the Philistines, who had disappeared hundreds of years previously. The Romans sought to erase the connection between the Jews and their land. Now Arabs of the region call themselves Palestinians and say, “We were here before you.” This lie must be exposed at every opportunity. Telling this truth is also our chance at achieving true peace.
Mr. Benzimra reminded me, this issue of whose land is Palestine is res judicata. Issue was joined at the Paris Peace Talks after WWI in 1919 where King Hussein, on behalf of the the Arabs and the Zionist Organization on behalf of the Jews sponsored claims for Palestine. By the end of the Paris Peace talks only the European claims had been decided so the Principal Allied War Powers took up the Middle East question when they reconvened in San Remo in April, 1920. The issue of who was to be recognized as the owner of the political rights to Palestine was decided in San Remo on April 25, 1920. The Principal Allied War Powers agreed to adopt the British Balfour policy for the political or national rights to Palestine and they did so, word for word. The French sought to amend the policy to add “political rights” to the savings clause that saved the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish comunities when the time came for the Jews to exercise sovereignty. The proposed amendment was not adopted but in a side agreement the War Powers said that the savings clause meant that it was not intended for the Arab communities to be required to surrender any of their existing rights.
Their action at San Remo was thereafter spelled out in greater detail in a writing entitled “The League of Nations Mandate for Palestine” that was presented to the League of Nations and approved by it, but not until 1922. In the meantime, in 1921, Winston Churchill , to solve Britain’s political problems with the French, decided to truncate the area for which the full political rights were attributable, to Palestine west of the River Jordan in accordance with Paragraph 25 of the Mandate to be presented to the League. A total of 52 nation-states including the United States recognized these political or national rights as belonging to World Jewry. The recognition of these rights survived the demise of the League of Nations by virtue of Article 80 of the UN Charter, the doctrine of Acquired Rights and the doctrine of Estopped. What was adopted was a Balfour two step program devoted first to facilitating and promoting Jewish immigration into Palestine from the Diaspora until the Jews in Palestine attained a population majority, and then vest legal dominion over the political rights in which pending the protection of a trustee, they would only have a beneficial right. As holders of the beneficial right they would only be entitled to a safe National Home, not sovereignty over a population much larger than theirs. When they attained a majority population and the capability to exercise sovereignty, legal dominion over the political rights was to vest in World Jewry. The reason given for this by those framing the Balfourt policy was the long association of the Jews with Palestine, some 3,700 years of continuous presence in Palestine by the Jewish Peoples, the last indigenous people of the area, albeit sometimes in small remaining groups. By 1950 the standards met for the legal interest in the political rights to Palestine had been met — the Jews had attained a majority population and the UN General Assembly in 1947 had recognized their capability to exercise sovereignty. The trustee had abdicated its trusteeship.
The battle for world recognition of World Jewry’s ownership of the political or national rights to Palestine should not start anew. It must concentrate on recognition that the issue has already been decided but has been obscured in the sands of time and by Soviet and Arab propaganda. The Government of Israel has never traversed the Arab claim of “inalienable rights” to Palestine. Instead of inalienable rights, they never had any rights as has been recognized by Professor Raschid Khalidi at Columbia in his book “The Iron Cage”. The Arabs have by threats of violence and actual violence sought to take these rights from the Jews. If the Mafia in this country did that, we would call it extortion. But the Government in Israel, instead of referring to these territories as “Liberated”, chooses to refer to them as “disputed” instead of “occupied”. If the Mafia were trying to force you to give up your property, would you think you would characterize the property as “disputed”? There is not a scintilla of evidence supporting a claim for the political rights to Palestine of Arabs living in Palestine whom the Soviets have designated “the Palestinian People”.
There is much evidence supporting the two step procedure adopted by the framers of the Balfour policy. It can be found in the memorandum of British Foreign Office dated September 19, 1917, written by Arnold Toynbee and Lewis Namier answering the argument of critics of the proposed policy to show them that their claim that the policy would lead to an antidemocratic government was “imaginary” because the political rights would be placed in trust of the US or the UK. This would give the trustee legal dominion over the political rights. In the Mandate itself the trustee is expressly given the right to legislate and to administer the law during the pendency of the trust. Another description of the two step procedure can be found in the briefing papers of the American Delegation to the Paris Peace Talks. At the Paris Peace talks, former Prime Minister David Lloyd-George expounded on this subject and the Arabs presented to the UNSCOP in 1947 that after WWI a visiting Arab delegation to London asked Winston Churchill when those in Palestine would be able to engage in self government and were told “Not until the Jews are a majority population.” For a full exposition with citations, see Brand, Roots of Israel’s Sovereignty and Boundaries in International Law: In Defense of the Levy Report
http://www.think-israel.org/brand.allegedoccupation.html
@ the phoenix:
I just ove to be praised, Iam a very arrogant person. My maternal Grandmother was very intuitive,I caught it from her.
It made my childhood difficult, because she would catch me doing wrong before I done it!!!!!!!!!!!
@ honeybee:
Dear honeybee,
Thank you, THANK YOU, thank you
You definitely seem to be a very multifaceted intuitive lady…
Beautiful video. It is a keeper!
@ the phoenix:
This is for you Phoenix,when you are troubled,: http://youtu.be/ajC94N0KJSw
In that respect, the powerful anti-Semitic Jews of the US are the first and foremost to be blamed. They are traitors to the state of IL.
@ ArnoldHarris:
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/ess A harmless Mex recipe
Sorry didn’t go through
@ Bert:
Not just ‘gentile friends’, Bert….
@ rongrand:
The Israeli ruling class will NEVER wake up in time to avoid having to fight again in a desperate war for their survival under the most dire circumstances and with more horrible loses. Israel’s leaders have long conceded that they are occupying Arab land and only claim ‘security’ as their excuse for not evacuating back to May 1967. The Arabs claim ‘justice’ which trumps Israeli security. The U.S. and the E.U. cannot be faulted for getting fed up with Israeli delays in creating what Israel has already agreed to – namely the creating of a Palestinian state inside Israel. They are prepared to now apply brutal sanctions on Israel while Israeli leaders stutter and stammer and are still unable to tell the simple truth in their own defense. No wonder that so may gentile friends of Israel turn away in disgust.
@ rongrand It will be best if the response is to both International Law and Canon law as many do not recognize Canon law..
How long will it take for the Israelis and their leaders recognize they have G-d given rights to the Holy Land, all of Israel?
While useless and worthless negotiations move forward with no peace in sight, the Arabs continue to settle here and there with the intention of diluting the Holy Land until it resembles the Muslim world.
Time for Israelis to wake up and select a non-secular government, a government that will not forget G-d led them back to the Holy Land.
Mr. Harris has stated it most succinctly. I have the cancelled checks and court records to prove him correct, all with out firing a shot.
@ ArnoldHarris:
Planet Harris is a place where life is nasty, brutish and short.
Sounds like you folks need a coup d’etat to get rid of this worst of all Judenraten. Their pitiful counterparts in the Jewish ghettos of Poland in 1939-1943 at least had the excuse that if they didn’t try cooperating with the Nazis, then the Nazi’s would simply murder them first before going after the rest of the Jewish kahal. But the modern Judenrat in power in Jerusalem has no cocked pistol aimed at their heads.
But they won’t the increasingly hardening encirclement. And they will not turn the governance of the State of Israel over to real Jewish nationalists.
And unless you are all walking around in a drunken or drugged stupor, you all know they won’t give up their power.
So unless they are removed from power by whatever means at hand, and removed damned quickly, they will solidify a second hostile and revenge-minded Arab state west of the Jordan River — utterly irrespective of whatever rights you imagined you had as the Jewish nation, based on this or that biblical and historic factoiod.
And if and when that happens, the stage will be set for the end of the Jewish state at some indefinite time in the future, when the local Arabs decide it is time for them to simultaneously storm your nice, shiny, rich ghetto in the sun, and proceed to slaughtering you or escorting you in long lines to the Mediterranean beaches if you surrender quietly.
But it’s your country. So you alone are responsible for its fate. And yours.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Israel has rights and the Palestinians have lies, but silence is consent.
since the very beginning of this saga, Israel preferred to stay silent and keep its property titles to the Land of Israel in dusty drawers.
In the meantime, a fictitious people arose claiming fictitious ownership rights to the land, with the blessing of the international community.
Instead of confronting them to their lies and falsifications, the successive Israeli governments elected to adopt the head in the sand politics.
The successive Israeli governments gave credence to their groundless claims, and shared with them the remaining portion of the Land of Israel, the Jewish People Heritage.
Although the Jewish People have been granted inalienable rights under international law and American law, the Israeli successive governments did not oppose them to the international community and to the United States, and they rather chose to bend and to bow to their unfounded demands.
It is high time to use all legal means to redress all the wrong-doings carried out by the successive Israeli governments since the Six Day War to date.
It is high time to pull out from the dusty drawers all our property titles and take legal actions to force the Israeli government to comply to each and any provisions contained therein, in the face of the international community and the United States.
As long as the Israeli government is not barred, we could once again find ourselves at a point of no return.
Norman, I really don’t give a damn whatsoever about morality as applied to national rights. The way things have worked out in the real world since the beginning of life on this planet is that you as a living entity have territorial rights only so long as you have the power to protect those rights. If and when your power to hold and control a given patch of territory dissipates, or is overcome by the power of some other living entity, you will lose that patch of territory. Then you will be enslaved, destroyed or absorbed by the living entity that took control of what had been your territory.
Unless you are some sort of asshole western liberal, and assuming you know something about basic biology, history and anthropology, you would have to admit that what I have written here is in fact both the history of life on this planet and most likely its future as well.
As for cooperation, it lasts only so long as it doesn’t conflict with what some powerholding entity thinks are its overriding interests.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
The Arabs talk about justice!
The Jews talk about pragmatism and “painful concessions.”
Which side do you believe has the upper moral hand? If you guessed the Arabs, you’d be right.
Jews sound like they’re trying to hold up the good guys’ desire for a just solution. All of which represents a staggering failure of Israeli diplomacy and the need to emphasize the justice of the Zionist cause.
No wonder Israel is on the defensive and finds itself on a slippery slide to oblivion.